Listado Terremotos

The earthquake information for lesser magnitudes can be found at this link Catálogo y boletines sísmicos.
La información de terremotos de magnitud inferior se puede obtener en Catálogo y boletines sísmicos.This data is subject to change as a consequence of continuous revisions of seismic analysis

A man in Quang Nam Province swings his arms to describe earthquakes that rattled his house early on Monday. The tremors have left his wife and son in a panic, he said.

The central province of Quang Nam, which has been disturbed by tremors caused by the Song Tranh 2 dam, was hit by more earthquakes Monday and Tuesday.

Two earthquakes, the bigger of which registered 2.7 on the Richter scale, occurred early Monday, and three others early on Tuesday.

Nguyen Quoc Viet, who lives near the dam, said he was sleeping when a tremor woke him Monday.

“The bed shook. I knew it was another earthquake, and I just ran out of the house.”

Ho Van Tien, who felt a quake while exercising at 5 p.m., said the tremors lasted around seven seconds. He said it was the biggest of the recent quakes he’d experienced.

Many local residents agreed the late quake Monday was the worst, while scientists later said it occurred as close as five kilometers from the earth’s surface.

The quakes added to a series of at least 17 since September 3, including one of a magnitude 4.2, which have panicked local residents.

Scientists said the quakes were “normal” reservoir-induced ones, caused by the increased pressure of the dam’s water on the earth’s surface as water from the reservoir is absorbed into fault lines in the area, triggering seismic activity.

Geologists sent to the province said the quakes were not dangerous, but local authorities did not believe them.

Many local residents have packed their clothes and blankets and are ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Others have built wooden houses, leaving their cracked concrete houses abandoned.

Many parents have also pulled their children out of schools downstream from the dam.

Local officials have demanded that the dam’s investor, the state-owned monopoly Electricity of Vietnam, not to store any more water at the dam, and compensate affected families, at least with rice.

The Song Tranh 2 hydropower dam, the biggest in the central region, was built at a cost of more than VND4.15 trillion (US$197.53 million). It caused first quakes in November 2010 soon after it was completed, and more in April this year after it developed cracks. The cracks were fixed by the end of August.

Kristianto, who uses one name, says there is no plan for an immediate evacuation since the nearest villages are outside the danger area of about 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) from the crater.

Mount Soputan is about 1,350 miles (2,160 kilometers) northeast of Jakarta. It last erupted in July last year, causing no casualties.

Indonesia straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanos and fault lines around the Pacific Basin. It has more active volcanoes than any other nation. Another mountain, Gamalama, erupted last week on the Molucca Islands.

Steam and ash billow out of Mount Gamalama on Ternate Island on Sunday. (AP Photo)

Solo, Central Java. As two volcanos in the eastern part of Indonesia continued to erupt on Monday, Mount Merapi in Central Java has been displaying increasing activity, with rumblings in the past week.

“In the evenings, there are rumblings that are accompanied by the ground shaking,” Sapto, from Samiran village in the district of Boyolali on the slope of Merapi, said on Monday.

He said that the 2,968-meter volcano was also active during the day, as evidenced by the thick column of ash billowing out from its crater.

Sapto said that as of Monday, local authorities had not issued any information to the public regarding the volcano.

Subiso, head of Selo subdistrict in Boyolali, confirmed that no official advisories or warnings had been issued yet about the increased activity on Merapi.

However, he said that the rumbling sounds from the volcano were almost routine in the area, and added that the situation there “is still safe.”

Ngatini, another resident said that the rumblings did not disturb local residents too much.

“If an eruption is imminent, the rumbling will be heard continuously and there will be some ash rain,” she said.

Merapi last erupted in October 2010, spewing enormous amounts of ash. Pyroclastic flows, fast-moving currents of superheated gas and rock, killed more than 300 people along the heavily populated slopes and forced 350,000 to evacuate.

Meanwhile, with a small eruption still taking place on Mount Lokon in Tomohon, North Sulawesi, authorities there are maintaining the alert status for the volcano and have banned all human activities within a 2.5-kilometer radius of the crater.

Farid Sukendar, head of the Lokon volcano observation post, said that the mountain erupted after dusk on Saturday, spewing superheated volcanic material up to 600 meters and ash up to 1,500 meters into the atmosphere.

“This volcano is active and therefore we should remain vigilant because it could erupt any time,” he said.

Arnold Poli, secretary of the town of Tomohon, located at the base of the mountain, said that the authorities were continuously monitoring the volcano. He said that the series of eruptions had not affected the activities of the local population but added the authorities were calling on everyone to remain alert.

He also said that despite the volcanic activity, the government had yet to evacuate anyone from the villages of Kinilow and Kakaskasen III, the two villages closest to the smoldering crater.

“No one has yet been ordered to evacuate,” he said.

Mount Soputan, in North Sulawesi’s South Minahasa district, and Mount Karangetang in the Sitaro Islands district across from the northernmost tip of Sulawesi remained on a government-ordered standby alert status, or just one rung below the most severe alert.

“There are now three volcanoes in North Sulawesi under the standby alert status,” said Hooke Makarawung, head of the North Sulawesi Disaster Mitigation Office (BPBD).

“People should remain vigilant.”

He said that about 110 people had been evacuated from the slopes of Karangetang and that the North Sulawesi administration had sent relief supplies to them.

Djauhari Kansil, the deputy governor of North Sulawesi, said that those evacuated were from East Siau subdistrict, but he added that in the daytime, the people were allowed to return to their village to work their fields.

They have been asked to return to the shelters in the evening.

The volcanology office also announced on Monday that it had raised the alert level for Mount Gamalama, on Ternate Island in North Maluku province, to standby.

The office, on its website, said that the alert status was raised on Sunday.

The site offered no further details.

The 1,715-meter Gamalama, a conical volcano that dominates Ternate Island, last erupted in December, destroying more than 100 houses and leaving farmers devastated after a thick layer of ash smothered fruit trees and crops.

Four villagers were confirmed dead in that eruption.

Metro TV reported on Monday that the mountain spewed a white column of ash about 500 meters into the atmosphere.

There was also some volcanic debris thrown up by the mountain but on a smaller scale.

It also said the local volcanology authorities had declared a 2.5-kilometer exclusion radius around the crater of the erupting volcano.

On Sunday evening, the smoke and volcanic debris thrown up by Gamalama reached about 1,000 meters into the atmosphere, according to the report.

Anak Krakatau in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra also showed some signs of activity earlier this month. The volcano is the remnant of Krakatau, the site of an earth-shattering eruption in 1883.

One of Indonesia’s most active volcanos has erupted, shooting ash and smoke nearly 1 1/2 kilometers (one mile) into the sky. State volcanology official Kristianto says Mount Soputan on central Indonesia’s Sulawesi island erupted Tuesday afternoon. Kristianto, who uses one name, says there is no plan for an immediate evacuation since the nearest villages are outside the danger area of about 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) from the crater. Mount Soputan is about 1,350 miles (2,160 kilometers) northeast of Jakarta. It last erupted in July last year, causing no casualties. Indonesia straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanos and fault lines around the Pacific Basin. It has more active volcanoes than any other nation. Another mountain, Gamalama, erupted last week on the Molucca Islands.

Extreme Temperatures/ Weather

Alaska Vacation Forecast

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A second major wind storm in less than two weeks swept through Alaska’s largest city on Sunday, but unlike the earlier storm, its greatest intensity was mostly on higher elevations where gusts as high as 120 mph were reported, weather forecasters said.

Chugach Electric said as many as 6,000 customers between Anchorage and the northern Kenai Peninsula were without power at the height of the storm. Fewer than two dozen customers remained in the dark, utility spokesman Phil Steyer said.

The outages are known or suspected to be caused by fallen trees, although not as many as the stronger storm earlier this month that downed hundreds of trees across the city. That storm blew a lot of leaves off branches, making “less surface area now for the wind to catch on,” Steyer said.

iWitness/cindymbrice

The storm two weeks ago brought down trees and caused thousands of power outages. Only 6,000 outages were reported Sunday.

Era Aviation commuter planes were grounded Saturday evening, though only partially because of the weather. Spokesman Steve Smith said the statewide airline also learned recently that electronic components for cockpit voice recorders on its 12-plane fleet must be replaced to conform to federal regulatory specifications.

Smith said the equipment could be replaced within a few hours and a few days, depending on the aircraft. In the meantime, some passengers have been rerouted to other carriers, he said. With moderate rains in the area, the National Weather service issued a flood warning for Anchorage’s Chester Creek.

The storm turned out to be less dramatic than expected in the lower elevation Anchorage bowl, with the fiercest winds concentrated in higher elevations, such as the Hillside area and Turnagain Arm south of town.

“It looks like we’re dodging a bullet in the bowl,” weather service meteorologist John Papineau said.

For Anchorage police, the storm brought far fewer calls than the last one, with just a few reports of downed trees and of two flooded intersections, dispatcher Eric Anderson said.

The weather service said wind gusts of 35-40 mph were hitting parts of anchorage Sunday night.

With weather service instruments in some of the windiest spots knocked out by the earlier storm, the agency was relying on wind measurements taken by weather enthusiasts, meteorologist Emily Niebuhr said.

The storm, whose long front has stretched over much of south-central Alaska, was expected to shift to the east and diminish later Sunday, Papineau said.

Arctic sea ice is shrinking at a rate much faster than scientists ever predicted and its collapse, due to global warming, may well cause extreme weather this winter in North America and Europe, according to climate scientists.

Last month, researchers announced that Arctic sea ice had dwindled to the smallest size ever observed by man, covering almost half the area it did 30 years ago, when satellites and submarines first began measuring it. While the loss of summer sea ice is likely to open up new shipping lanes and may connect the West Coast of the United States to the Far East via a trans-polar route, researchers say it will also affect weather patterns and Arctic wildlife. “It’s probably going to be a very interesting winter,” climate scientist Jennifer Francis said Wednesday in a teleconference with reporters. Francis, a researcher at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, has argued that shrinking Arctic ice can be tied to such recent weather events as prolonged cold spells in Europe, heavy snows in the Northeastern U.S. and Alaska, and heat waves in Russia. Decades ago, Arctic ice covered about 6 million square miles of sea in the winter, and would shrink to about 3 million square miles in the summer. The rate of summer melt increased enormously around 2005, however, and today scientists say Arctic ice covers about 1 million square miles. “This is a very small amount of ice indeed,” said Peter Wadhams, an ocean physics professor at the University of Cambridge. Wadhams said that while Arctic ice used to build up over many years, new ice formations are now breaking up and melting each summer. “I think that what we can expect in the next few years is further collapse leading to an ice-free Arctic in summer,” Wadhams said. “It really is a dramatic change.” Previously, scientists had predicted that it would take 30 or 40 more years before the Arctic was ice-free in the summer.

The loss of Arctic ice has several effects. Ice reflects heat and solar energy back into space. With less ice cover, that heat energy is instead absorbed by the ocean, which warms and melts more ice. Currently, the Arctic region is the fastest-warming region on the planet, and the change in temperature will probably influence weather patterns here and in Europe, according to Francis. The heating and cooling of Arctic seawater has been affecting the jet stream – the river of air that flows from west to east high above the Earth’s surface – and has slowed it down, Francis said. The jet stream controls the formation and movement of storm systems, so when its movement slows, weather conditions persist for longer periods of time over the same area. They get “stuck.” “If you’re in a nice dry pattern with sunny skies, it’s great if it lasts for a few days. But If it lasts for a few weeks, well then you’re starting to talk about a drought,” Francis said. “If you have a rainy pattern and it hangs around for a long time, then that becomes a situation that could lead to flooding.” Arctic warming will influence weather to the south during the late fall and winter. While Francis said it would probably result in severe weather this winter, it was impossible to predict when and where those events would occur. Record ice melts this year and in 2007 have alarmed many scientists, mostly because they thought it would take many more years to reach this state. James Overland, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said forecasts failed to account for the physics of lost solar energy reflection and warming ocean water. “These are really surprises to most scientists,” Overland said. “In looking at climate models that are used to look forward, they’ve tended to say the Arctic may be ice-free by 2040 or 2050. It looks like things are happening a lot faster, and it’s because not all of the physics that we’re seeing today were well-handled in these climate models.” Overland, who is also an associate professor at the University of Washington’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, said these effects are known as “Arctic amplification” and would carry heavy consequences for wildlife like polar bears and walruses by reducing their habitat. Wednesday’s telephone news conference was hosted by Climate Nexus, a New York-based nonprofit that seeks to publicize the effects of climate change. (c)2012 Los Angeles Times Distributed by MCT Information Services

During the first six months of 2012, sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem were the highest ever recorded, according to the latest Ecosystem Advisory issued by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). Above-average temperatures were found in all parts of the ecosystem, from the ocean bottom to the sea surface and across the region, and the above average temperatures extended beyond the shelf break front to the Gulf Stream.

The annual 2012 spring plankton bloom was intense, started earlier and lasted longer than average. This has implications for marine life from the smallest creatures to the largest marine mammals like whales. Atlantic cod continued to shift northeastward from its historic distribution center. The Northeast US Continental Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) extends from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The NEFSC has monitored this ecosystem with comprehensive sampling programs from 1977 onward; prior to 1977, this ecosystem was also monitored by the NEFSC through a series of separate but coordinated programs dating back decades. “A pronounced warming event occurred on the Northeast Shelf this spring, and this will have a profound impact throughout the ecosystem,” said Kevin Friedland, a scientist in the NEFSC’s Ecosystem Assessment Program. “Changes in ocean temperatures and the timing of the spring plankton bloom could affect the biological clocks of many marine species, which spawn at specific times of the year based on environmental cues like water temperature.” Friedland said the average sea surface temperature (SST) exceeded 10.5 degrees C (51°F) during the first half of 2012, exceeding the previous record high in 1951. Average SST has typically been lower than 9 degrees C (48°F) over the past three decades. Sea surface temperature in the region is based on both contemporary satellite remote-sensing data and long-term ship-board measurements, with historical SST conditions based on ship-board measurements dating back to 1854. In some nearshore locations like Delaware and Chesapeake Bays in the Middle Atlantic Bight region, temperatures were more than 6 degrees C (11°F) above historical average at the surface and more than 5 degrees C (9°F) above average at the bottom. In deeper offshore waters to the north, bottom waters were 1 degree C (2°F) warmer in the eastern Gulf of Maine and greater than 2 degrees C (3.6°F) warmer in the western Gulf of Maine.

Ocean bottom temperature data cited in the advisory posted today came from a variety of sources, including eMOLT, a cooperative research program between the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and lobstermen who deploy temperature probes attached to lobster traps. While some of the temperature probes from the eMOLT program are still in the water and have not yet been returned, those that have been returned indicate that bottom water temperatures in 2012 were the warmest since the eMOLT program began in 2001. Atlantic cod distribution in the Gulf of Maine continues a northeasterly shift, with the spring 2012 data consistent with a response to ecosystem warming. Warming ocean temperatures and the resulting impact on the distribution of 36 fish stocks was reported by the Center in a 2009 study published in Marine Ecology Progress Series. That study analyzed annual NEFSC spring survey data from 1968 to 2007 and other information and found that about half of the 36 fish stocks studied in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, many of them commercially valuable species, have been shifting northward over the past four decades, with some disappearing from US waters as they move farther offshore. Friedland notes that although cod didn’t shift as much as other species like hake in the 2009 study, the effects of warming water on ocean currents and other ocean circulation patterns could change that. “Cod distribution continues to be dynamic, with northerly shifts detected in the spring 2012 data, consistent with a response to ecosystem warming,” Friedland said. “The big question is whether or not these changes will continue, or are they a short-term anomaly?” Mike Fogarty, who heads the Ecosystem Assessment Program, says the abundance of cod and other finfish is controlled by a complex set of factors, and that increasing temperatures in the ecosystem make it essential to monitor the distribution of many species, some of them migratory and others not. “A complex combination of factors influence ocean conditions, and it isn’t always easy to understand the big picture when you are looking at one specific part of it at one specific point in time, “Fogarty said, a comparison similar to not seeing the forest when looking at a single tree in it. “We now have information from a variety of sources collected over a long period of time on the ecosystem, and are continually adding more data to clarify specific details. The data clearly show a relationship between all of these factors.” The 2012 spring plankton bloom, one of the longest duration and most intense in recent history, started at the earliest date recorded since the ocean color remote sensing data series began in 1998. In some locations, the spring bloom began in February, and was fully developed by March in all areas except Georges Bank, which had an average although variable spring bloom. The 2012 spring bloom in the Gulf of Maine began in early March, the earliest recorded bloom in that area. “What this early start means for the Northeast Shelf ecosystem and its marine life is unknown,” Fogarty said. “What is known is that things are changing, and we need to continue monitoring and adapting to these changes.” Intensive surveys of environmental conditions on the Northeast Shelf from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Nova Scotia were conducted from 1977 to 1987 as part of the Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment & Prediction (MARMAP) program. The efforts continued at reduced levels through the 1990s and are ongoing today as part of the Center’s Ecosystems Monitoring (EcoMon) program. Plankton samples are collected six times a year in each of the four subareas of the Northeast Shelf: the Middle Atlantic Bight, Southern New England, Georges Bank, and the Gulf of Maine. EcoMon scientists also collect water samples and other oceanographic data about conditions during each season in each of the four areas to provide a long-term view of changing conditions on the Shelf. Ecosystem advisories have been issued twice a year by the NEFSC’s Ecosystems Assessment Program since 2006 as a way to routinely summarize overall conditions in the region. The reports show the effects of changing coastal and ocean temperatures on fisheries from Cape Hatteras to the Canadian border. The advisories provide a snapshot of the ecosystem for the fishery management councils and also a broad range of stakeholders from fishermen to researchers. The Spring 2012 Ecosystem Advisory with supporting information is available online.

A fierce storm packing 140-kilometer (87-mile) an hour winds tore across the heart of South America on Wednesday, killing five people in Paraguay and wreaking havoc in Argentina and Uruguay.

The Roque Alonso suburb of the Paraguayan capital Asuncion was devastated by the storm and widespread looting was reported in its aftermath.

Four police cadets died and 15 were injured when the roof of their dormitory collapsed, and a 16-year-old boy died at a shopping center when a water tank collapsed on him outside a pharmacy.

“Roque Alonso has to be built all over again,” police commander Heriberto Marmol said.

Dozens of injured people flooded Asuncion hospitals and traffic was gridlocked in parts of the city.

A crowd of thousands braved torrential rain for a concert by the rock band Scorpions only to see the show cancelled.

Nationwide, at least 5,000 homes were destroyed and more than 80 people injured in storm-related incidents, Aldo Saldivar of the national emergency response center said.

The storm also blew the roof off homes and barns in Neembucu, south of the capital and knocked out power in the town of Encarnacion for many hours.

The wind was less severe further south in Argentina and Uruguay, around 100 kilometers (62 mph) per hour, but strong gusts still ripped of roofs and toppled trees and power lines, plunging some regions into darkness.

Written by

RUDRAPRAYAG, India (CNN) — The death toll in cloudburst that triggered a massive landslide and affected nearly five villages of northern India’s Uttarakhand state, rose to 50 and about 20 people are still reported to be missing.

The cloudburst preceded by incessant rains led to a massive landslide in the state’s Rudraprayag district caused heavy damage in the hilly region rendering almost 500 people homeless.

Search and the rescue operations are in full swing in the cloudburst-hit area, but the official says rains have disrupted the relief and rescue work.

Speaking to Asian News International in the state capital Dehradun, director of the Disaster Management and Mitigation Department (DMMD), Piyush Rautela said the rescue operations are in full swing in the region and also the basic necessities are being provided to the homeless people staying in relief camps.

“The incident happened on September 13 and 14 which affected four to five villages around Ukhimath. Again there were incidents of landslides in the morning of September 16. From this incident, so far 50 bodies have been recovered, and 20 people are still reported to be missing. The operation to search the missing people is going on.

The personnel from ITBP (Indo Tibetan Border Police Force), NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) and PAC (Provincial Armed Constabulary) are engaged in rescue operations. All our rescue teams are working. Two relief camps are there in Ukhimath for those who have been affected. About 500 people are staying there.

All the necessary items like food and other basic facilities are being provided to them,” he said

The cloudburst that occurred in the wee hours on last Friday, wreaked havoc in several villages of the area and killed most of the victims in their sleep.

Heavy monsoons have always resulted in calamities in different parts of India with each passing year.

For the questionnaire, 34% of the people answered they want to evacuate Fukushima city, and local government staff is commenting they need to take measures about this situation.

In May, Fukushima city government sent questionnaires to 5,000 people of over 20 years old living in Fukushima city and to 500 people who evacuated to out of Fukushima city. The valid response rate was 55%.

The result showed 34% of them answered “They want to evacuate even now.”. 31% of them answered “They used to want to evacuate.”.

Among people who evacuated to out of Fukushima city, 27% of them answered “They don’t want to come back.”. 19% of them answered “They don’t want to come back to Fukushima city if possible.”
However, 55% of them answered “They want to come back to Fukushima city.”

The city government staff comments, “The result is very severe. We need to take some measures. “.

The purpose is to help people understand and resolve their anxiety about radiation properly by supplying consumers with information about how Japanese and local governments take measures about food contamination, and the fact that only little amount of radiation is contained in food.

<End>

On the leaflet, they emphasized it’s safe to keep eating potentially contaminated food only if it’s under the safety limit.

<Translate>
If it’s under the safety limit, it’s safe to keep eating.

New safety limit has been introduced since April 2012. If it’s under this safety limit, the total dose for the entire life is less than 1mSv, which is safe adequately.

This safety limit is strictly determined by FAO and WHO and it doesn’t have to be more strict.
<End>

Epidemic Hazards / Diseases

Residents in the Concho Valley area off of Highway 61 noticed hundreds of prairies dogs had died in a short span of time. Prairie dogs are considered sentinel animals to the fact that plague is in the area. Officials with Arizona Game and Fish were notified by an alert resident and further contact was made with health officials from Apache and Coconino counties, the state health department, as well as experts at Northern Arizona University. NAU is home to the Microbial Genetics and Genomics Center and has been a key player in testing for plague for the past 10 years. The lab sent a team to the area to trap fleas in the prairie dog holes that had recent die-offs. The team’s first visit was on August 27 and results from the lab testing showed positive for plague.

Biohazard name:

Yersinia pestis (plague)

Biohazard level:

4/4 Hazardous

Biohazard desc.:

Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.

Malaria has been found in birds in parts of Alaska, and global climate change will drive it even farther north, according to a new study published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

The spread could prove devastating to arctic bird species that have never encountered the disease and thus have no resistance to it, said San Francisco State University Associate Professor of Biology Ravinder Sehgal, one of the study’s co-authors. It may also help scientists understand the effects of climate change on the spread of human malaria, which is caused by a similar parasite. Researchers examined blood samples from birds collected at four sites of varying latitude, with Anchorage as a southern point, Denali and Fairbanks as middle points and Coldfoot as a northern point, roughly 600 miles north of Anchorage. They found infected birds in Anchorage and Fairbanks but not in Coldfoot. Using satellite imagery and other data, researchers were able to predict how environments will change due to global warming—and where malaria parasites will be able to survive in the future. They found that by 2080, the disease will have spread north to Coldfoot and beyond. “Right now, there’s no avian malaria above latitude 64 degrees, but in the future, with global warming, that will certainly change,” Sehgal said. The northerly spread is alarming, he added, because there are species in the North American arctic that have never been exposed to the disease and may be highly susceptible to it.

Avian malaria was found in Alaska in the Savannah sparrow, pictured here. Credit: Jenny Carlson, SF State “For example, penguins in zoos die when they get malaria, because far southern birds have not been exposed to malaria and thus have not developed any resistance to it,” he said. “There are birds in the north, such as snowy owls or gyrfalcons, that could experience the same thing.” The study’s lead author is Claire Loiseau, a former postdoctoral fellow in Sehgal’s laboratory at SF State. Ryan Harrigan, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, provided data modeling for the project. The research was funded by grants from the AXA Foundation and National Geographic. Researchers are still unsure how the disease is being spread in Alaska and are currently collecting additional data to determine which mosquito species are transmitting the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria. The data may also indicate if and how malaria in humans will spread northward. Modern medicine makes it difficult to track the natural spread of the disease, Sehgal said, but monitoring birds may provide clues as to how global climate change may effect the spread of human malaria. More information: “First evidence and predictions of Plasmodium transmission in Alaskan bird populations” was written by Claire Loiseau, Ryan J. Harrigan, Anthony K. Cornel, Sue L. Guers, Molly Dodge, Timothy Marzec, Jenny S. Carlson, Bruce Seppi and Ravinder N. M. Sehgal and published Sept. 19 in PLoS ONE. Journal reference: PLoS ONE search and more info website Provided by San Francisco State University search and more info website

A ringed seal peaks out from its snow cave. (Credit: Brendan Kelly, NSF)

As sea ice in the Arctic continues to shrink during this century, more than two thirds of the area with sufficient snow cover for ringed seals to reproduce also will disappear, challenging their survival, scientists report in a new study.

The ringed seal, currently under consideration for threatened species listing, builds caves to rear its young in snow drifts on sea ice. Snow depths must be on average at least 20 centimeters, or 8 inches, to enable drifts deep enough to support the caves.

“It’s an absolute condition they need,” said Cecilia Bitz, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. She’s a co-author of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

But without sea ice, the platform that allows the snow to pile up disappears, ultimately reducing the area where the seals can raise their pups.

Bitz typically focuses on studying the area and thickness of sea ice. “But when a seal biologist telephoned and asked what our climate models predict for snow depth on the ice, I said, ‘I have no idea,'” she said. “We had never looked.”

That biologist was co-author Brendan Kelly of the National Science Foundation and he was curious about the snow depth trend because he was contributing to a governmental report in response to the petition to list the seals as threatened.

The researchers, including lead author and UW atmospheric sciences graduate student Paul Hezel, found that snowfall patterns will change during this century but the most important factor in determining snow depth on the ice will be the disappearance of the sea ice.

“The snowfall rate increases slightly in the middle of winter by the end of the century,” Hezel said. However, at the same time sea ice is expected to start forming later in the year than it does now. The slightly heavier snowfall in the winter won’t compensate for the fact that in the fall — which is also when it snows the heaviest — snow will drop into the ocean instead of piling up on the ice.

The researchers anticipate that the area of the Arctic that accumulates at least 20 centimeters of snow will decrease by almost 70 percent this century. With insufficient snow depth, caves won’t hold up.

Other climate changes threaten those caves, too. For instance, the snow will melt earlier in the year than it does now, so it’s possible the caves won’t last until the young seals are old enough to venture out on their own. In addition, more precipitation will fall as rain, which soaks into the snow and can cause caves to collapse.

The research is important for more than just the ringed seals. “There are many other reasons to study snow cover,” Hezel said. “It has a huge thermodynamic impact on the thickness of the ice.”

Snow on sea ice in fall and winter acts like a blanket that slows the release of heat from the relatively warm ocean into the atmosphere. That means deeper snow tempers sea ice growth.

In the spring, snow has a different impact on the ice. Since snow is more reflective than ice, it creates a cooling effect on the surface. “So the presence of snow helps sustain the icepack into spring time,” Hezel said.

To produce the study, the scientists examined 10 different climate models, looking at historic and future changes of things like sea ice area, precipitation, snowfall and snow depth on sea ice. The resulting prediction for declining snow depth on sea ice this century agreed across all of the models.

The new research comes too late to be cited in the report about ringed seals that was written by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in response to the petition to list the ringed seal as threatened. However, it confirms results that were based on a single model that Bitz provided for the report two years ago. NOAA expects to issue its final decision soon.

The UW scientists on this study were funded by the Office of Naval Research.

Day 256 Antarctic ice is the highest ever for the date, and the eighth highest daily reading ever recorded. All seven higher readings occurred during the third week of September, 2007 – the week of the previous Arctic record minimum.

NSIDC does have a completely nonsensical discussion page explaining why Antarctic ice does not affect the climate.

Scientists monitor both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, but Arctic sea ice is more significant to understanding global climate because much more Arctic ice remains through the summer months, reflecting sunlight and cooling the planet.

Nonsense. There is very little sunlight reaching the Arctic Ocean in September, and much more reaching Antarctic ice – because it is located at lower latitudes. Arctic ice took its big decline in mid-August, after the sun was already low in the sky.

Sea ice near the Antarctic Peninsula, south of the tip of South America, has recently experienced a significant decline. The rest of Antarctica has experienced a small increase in Antarctic sea ice.

Antarctic ice is nearing an all-time record high, and is above average everywhere.

Antarctica and the Arctic are reacting differently to climate change partly because of geographical differences. Antarctica is a continent surrounded by water, while the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land. Wind and ocean currents around Antarctica isolate the continent from global weather patterns, keeping it cold. In contrast, the Arctic Ocean is intimately linked with the climate systems around it, making it more sensitive to changes in climate.

Biological Hazards / Wildlife / Hazmat

The H5N1 avian flu virus has been detected in the city of Zhanjiang in south China’s Guangdong province, experts confirmed on Tuesday. The virus has infected 14,050 ducks and killed 6,300 of them since Sept. 11, when symptoms were first reported, a Ministry of Agriculture official said. After the epidemic was confirmed, local authorities cordoned off an infected area in the city and killed all poultry in the area before starting to decontaminate it, the official said. China is particularly prone to bird flu epidemics, as it has the world’s largest poultry population and many rural farmers live in close proximity to their poultry.

Biohazard name:

H5N1 – Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus

Biohazard level:

4/4 Hazardous

Biohazard desc.:

Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.

A fourth case of anthrax has been confirmed in a German heroin user since June, reports the Robert Koch Institut (RKI) in a news release Friday, September 14. According to the release (translated), the individual saw a doctor in mid-September presenting with a soft tissue infection in the area of injection site. The presumptive diagnosis of anthrax was confirmed by the RKI using real-time PCR laboratory on the wound material. Germany has now confirmed 4 cases in two states, two in Regensburg and two in Berlin since June 2012. The RKI says, the fact that the anthrax strains that were isolated from the first three anthrax cases in 2012 are similar or at least very closely related to the strains of the German and British cases of the years 2009/2010, suggests that the same source of infection might still be active. This case is the eleventh of anthrax among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Europe reported since June. In addition to the four cases in Germany, there have been four in the United Kingdom, two in Denmark and one in France. The RKI reminds the public, since anthrax is not passed on from person-to-person, there is no risk of transmission.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has decided to stop transport of live water-fowl from North and Central Vietnam to the South, in an effort to curb spread of the new highly toxic strain of avian flu virus. Pham Van Dong, deputy director of the Department of Animal Health, stated this at a meeting held yesterday in Hanoi by the National Steering Committee for Avian Flu Prevention and Control. The new strain, 2.3.2.1 C, which has been detected, is highly toxic and therefore extremely deadly. The virus strain has recently spread to Vietnam and is now present in affected areas in the northern and central provinces of Hai Phong, Ha Tinh, Ninh Binh, Nam Dinh, Bac Kan, Thanh Hoa and Quang Ngai. Fearing the virus may spread to South Vietnam, the Department of Animal Health was asked to isolate the virus and ban transport of live water-fowl from infected areas. Dong said that slaughterhouses practicing good hygiene should be mentioned to localities from the central province of Thua Thien-Hue to Ho Chi Minh City. Because the new strain is different from the earlier A/H5N1 virus, the ministry has urged for experiments and tests to confirm whether the vaccine used to combat A/H5N1 is also effective against the new strain. If the existing vaccine is ineffective, studies on new vaccines should be conducted soon. The Central Veterinary Diagnosis Center has been asked to study the new strain to help find a specific medication to fight the virus.

The Czech Republic has the 23rd victim of methyl alcohol, an autopsy has confirmed, Stepanka Zatloukalova, from the police presidium said. She said methanol was not confirmed as the cause of death of another two people. They, too, died of alcohol, but not of methyl alcohol, Zatloukalova said. Tens of other people are hospitalised. Some of the cured have gone blind. The first victim in the series of methanol-related poisonings was reported on September 6. The sale of drinks with more than 20 percent of alcohol have been banned in the country since Friday evening. Extensive police raids and checks have uncovered barrels with dangerous alcohol since the “prohibition” was introduced on Friday and some distributors of the bootleg alcohol have been arrested. Both producers and sellers complain about the ban because it inflicts huge damage on them.

Articles of Interest

Tornado Of Fire Caught On Tape In Australia Fire Twister

THERE’S something mean and magical about Australia’s Outback. An Alice Springs filmmaker captured both when a whirlwind of fire erupted before his eyes.
Chris Tangey of Alice Springs Film and Television was scouting locations near Curtin Springs station, about 80km from Ularu, last week when confronted by a fiery phenomenon.
He had just finished his tour of the station when workers encountered difficulties with a grader. So he went to help them.
A small fire was burning in nearby bushland, so Mr Tangey decided to start filming.
He caught the sight of his life.
A twister touched down on the spot fire, fanning it into a furious tower of flame.
“It sounded like a jet fighter going by, yet there wasn’t a breath of wind where we were,” he told the Northern Territory News.
“You would have paid $1000 a head if you knew it was about to happen.”
The column of fire danced about the landscape for about 40 minutes, he said, as he and the station workers stood transfixed.

There was talk of making a quick getaway, Mr Tangey said. But everyone was too hypnotised to feel scared – and he continued furiously filming.

“The bizarre thing was that it rarely moved,” he said.

“These things just stood there because there was no wind to move them … but it was flickering incredibly fast.”

Darwin weather forecaster David Matthews said small twisters were common in isolated areas. But the fiery vortex was highly unusual.

“The flames would have assisted by trying to suck in air and that could have helped generate those circular winds,” Mr Matthews said.

MessageToEagle.com – The problem with rivers around the world continues. A while back the Yangtze River in China turned red, and now there are reports of a river in Russia that has suddenly started to boil.

Hundreds of shocked residents that live in Yekaterinburg, Russia describe how a small river named Olkhovka that passes through the city unexpectedly turned into a stream of extremely hot water.

Olkhovka river in Russia begins to boil, causing yet another environmental disaster.

No one knew what caused the phenomenon, but the fact is that the river ecosystem was severely affected, causing the death of thousands of fish lying on the banks.

“The water is really hot. The shore of the river is littered with dead fish,” a Professor from a local university said.

The local urban traffic control service reported the problem.

According to them, the most likely cause to the disaster is that a great leakage of hot water that had flowed into the river Olkhovka of such intensity that could be water vapor on the surface.

“The problem is that when the river connects to the pond, the water flows through a tunnel, and no one knows exactly where there was a rush, “Russian urban traffic control dispatchers said.

Industries that might be involved, among which is the “heat supply company Sverdlovsk” deny any connection with thermal pollution of the watercourse. But local authorities are well aware that this is a problem caused by human action.

Volcanic Activity

Volcanic activity on Spain’s El Hierro island has resumed far below the Earth’s surface in a similar manner to last July, albeit slightly stronger, the director of the National Geographic Institute, or IGN, in the Canary Islands, Maria Jose Blanco, told Efe on Sunday.

Blanco said that a peak of seismic activity is under way, a continuation of the volcanic process – a shifting of magma many kilometers (miles) under ground – that began in July 2011 which, although the main activity ended at the time with an undersea eruption, that did not mean that the overall activity had come to a definitive conclusion.

The IGN official said that at present it is not expected that the seismic movements that have been registered – which have occurred at depths of some 20 kilometers (about 12.5 miles) – exceed 3.2 on the Richter scale, a fairly low level.

Blanco could not specify how long this new round of activity would last, although she did say that seismic peaks like the current one would, in all likelihood, continue to occur.

Therefore, she said, the IGN is studying the idea of convening the scientific committee of the Civil Protection Plan for Volcanic Risk in the Canaries after this reactivation in the depths of the El Hierro volcano, where over the past three days more than 330 minor seismic movements have been registered.

Officials with the regional government of the Canaries told Efe that experts had verified “an acceleration of released seismic energy accompanied by deformations” in underground structures.

For the present, the largest movement registered so far was the one measured at 3.2 on the Richter scale, which was felt on Saturday for some 13 hours and 15 minutes by the residents of the municipality of El Pinar, according to IGN data.

A slight increase of activity can be noted at Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico. The frequency of explosions has increased to more than 1 per hour, i.e. doubled when compared to last week.
The more energetic explosions produced small ash plumes rising up to 1 km. Episodes of volcanic tremor occurred as well, CENAPRED writes.

The new seismic swarm at El Hierro continues with hundreds of small quakes per day concentrated at about 20 km depth in the south-central part of the island near El Pinar. Pulses of tremor and a slight inflation are visible as well, but for now, it seems that magma is not moving much.

San Cristobal volcano had a small explosion yesterday at 8:17 am local time. Recent measurements showed an increase of SO2 emissions to 2,490 tons per day, i.e. almost double than before. Also, seismic tremor increased in the evening of 15 Sep.

Fuego volcano, Guatemala: Activity remains at normal levels with sporadic weak to moderate explosions with ash rising 400-800 meters and some rumbling sounds. The lava flow to the Taniluya canyon has apparently decreased a lot, as INSIVUMEH reported it to be only 50 m long yesterday.

Santiaguito volcano continues to have occasional explosions ejecting ash columns to 500 meters height, which spread west and northwest over the region of the villages of El Rosario and San Marcos, Palajunoj. There is constant activity in the 4 active lava flows, generating avalanches of blocks deposited within the river banks Nima Nima I and II.

Most other volcanoes in Central and Southern America have not shown any significantly unusual behavior.

Smoke and ash billow from North Maluku’s Gamalama on Sunday. (Antara Photo/Rosa Panggabean)

Two of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes erupted on Saturday, prompting the government to issue warnings to populations living near the affected mountains.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said on Sunday that new eruption started at Lokon in North Sulawesi and Gamalama at Ternate in North Maluku.

Lokon generated a 1,500-meter high ash plume and violent strombolian (low-level) activity with some lava flow, while Gamalama produced a shower of ashes that covered the nearby city.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for BNPB, said on Sunday that Lokon, located in North Sulawesi’s Tomohon area, erupted at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

The explosion from the eruption shattered windows of the command post built to monitor the activities of the volcano, he said.

The agency, Sutopo said, had issued warnings to local administrations to prepare precautionary measures, and called on people to remain alert.

“The residents don’t have to be evacuated but they must not do any activities within the range of five kilometers from the volcano,” Sutopo said.

He said that the BNPB had asked the Tomohon administration to raise the awareness of residents.

Meanwhile, the Gamalama spurt sent ashes into the air for about 15 minutes at 11 p.m., before the wind carried the ashes toward the North Maluku capital of Ternate. “The ashes came down on the city, decreasing visibility to only 50 meters,” Sutopo said.

He said BNPB’s local branch went to the affected area and set up four stations to help people in the event of a larger eruption. “Here also, we don’t see any need to evacuate people. But we will stay on high alert,” the official said.

Lokon has erupted several times previously, with an explosion in July 2011 forcing more than 5,200 people to be evacuated.

The eruption created huge clouds of ash as high as 3,500 meters.

Lokon’s last deadly eruption was in 1991, when a Swiss tourist was killed.

Last December, Gamalama erupted, resulting in four villagers being killed and dozens others being hospitalized. About 1,000 residents were forced to evacuate.

The Indonesian archipelago has dozens of active volcanoes and straddles major tectonic fault lines known as the “Ring of Fire” between the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Earlier this month, there was volcanic activity at Lampung’s Anak Krakatau.

Nicaragua boosted its responses to volcanic activity in the northwestern region Saturday, as the San Cristobal volcano acted up for the second time in a week. Authorities installed 43 radio communication stations along the Pacific coast to monitor San Cristobal and another volcano, Telica. The radio posts aim to “ensure improved monitoring of seismic and volcanic behavior in the area,” said civil defense chief Colonel Nestor Solis, enabling authorities to issue more accurate warnings sooner. A number of towns near San Cristobal, located some 135 kilometers (83 miles) northwest of the capital, were evacuated last week after the volcano began rumbling, sending a column of smoke and ash high into the sky, before subsiding. On Saturday, the 1,745-meter (5,725-foot) tall volcano again spewed “abundant gas emissions moving toward the northeast” and increased seismic tremor and sulfur concentrations, according to the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies, or INETER. Sulfur dioxide monitoring showed levels of the compound — considered a measure of volcanic activity — were nearly double the readings from previous days, said the director of national disaster prevention and relief agency SINAPRED, Guillermo Gonzalez.

Taal volcano’s seismic network detected one volcanic earthquake during the past 24-hour observation period. Steaming activity and crater glow could not be observed due to thick clouds covering the volcano’s summit the whole day yesterday up to this morning,

Mayon Volcano’s seismic network detected one volcanic earthquake during the past 24-hour observation period. Steaming activity and crater glow could not be observed due to thick clouds covering the volcano’s summit the whole day yesterday up to this morning,

A volcano has erupted in eastern Indonesia, spewing clouds of thick, gray ash. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. State volcanologist Kristianto says Mount Gamalama in the Molucca Islands sprang to life last week. It unleashed two strong eruptions over the weekend, sending volcanic ash as high as 1 kilometer (0.62 miles). Kristianto, who uses only one name, says slow-moving red lava was visible at the peak of the eruption Monday. Villages have been blanketed with thick ash but no evacuations have been ordered. Gamalama last erupted late last year, and its mudflows killed four villagers two weeks later. Indonesia is a vast archipelago with millions of people living on mountains or near fertile flood plains. Seasonal downpours here often cause landslides.

Radiation /Nuclear

[This event happened on friday, 14.09.2012] The nuclear reactor at Seabrook Station has been powered down since Friday evening, when a water intake valve was jammed closed by a computer glitch, according to an announcement by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Water sank to a “low low level” inside one of Seabrook Station’s four steam generators on Friday, Sept. 14, after the valve problem occurred, according to an NRC inspector who was called to the scene. The low water level tripped an automatic shutdown of the reactor at approximately 8:25 p.m. The NRC inspector’s report indicates a computer card controlling the feedwater regulator valve failed. All other systems performed as expected after the reactor process stopped, according to the NRC inspector’s report. “One of our resident inspectors assigned to Seabrook traveled to the site Friday night to independently verify that the shutdown was being safely and effectively carried out and did not identify any concerns,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan wrote in an email announcement Monday. A report created by the NRC inspector indicates “emergency feedwater” was “actuated” because of low water levels in the steam generator. Al Griffith, a spokesman for the operators of Seabrook Station, Next Era Energy, said the plant was scheduled to power down on Sunday for a “refueling outage.” The event on Friday led them to begin the refueling outage early, he said. “Because we were entering a refueling outage anyway, we’ll keep the plant down,” Griffith said.

Epidemic Hazards / Disease

Six people have died from the cholera outbreak in parts of the Volta Region. Five of the deaths were recorded in Akatsi South while the sixth death was recorded in Adidome in the Central Tongu District. Four Electoral Areas in the Akatsi District are all battling with the disease.The Assemblyman for the Wute Electoral Area, Sammy Wuadi, said the cholera outbreak did not come as a surprise and that the people are being conscientised to keep their surroundings clean. According to Mr Wuadi, the situation is gradually abating following the strategies put in place by the Environmental Health Directorate to forestall the spread. A Senior Environmental Health Assistant in the Akatsi South District, Ms Akua Dzaka also stated that residents are being advised to desist from drinking from the Tordji River which is believed to have been contaminated. “We suspect that that is the source of the cholera outbreak and we are also educating them to take good care of the food that they eat,” she said.

Biohazard name:

Cholera

Biohazard level:

2/4 Medium

Biohazard desc.:

Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.

The Ebola virus has taken the Congo by storm, killing 31 people in the northeast part of the country. Another 38 people have the disease, sending alarm bells off in the World Health Organization. The total number dead has doubled over the past week, and workers are worried that having traditional funerals might increase the spread of the disease among those in attendance. There is no cure for Ebola and the disease kills 40 to 90 percent of those infected. It is also painful, leading to severe internal bleeding.

El Paso County health officials announced Friday, September 14, that a wild rabbit found on the northeast side of Colorado Springs has been laboratory-confirmed positive for Yersinia pestis, the cause of plague. This comes on the heels of a Pagosa Springs girl who contracted the plague and recovered from the disease. El Paso Countyâs last reported human case occurred in 1991. An El Paso County Public Health news release Friday says the animal was found is East of Powers Boulevard near the St. Francis Medical Center/Hospital. Of utmost importance is the risk to the human population in the area. Infectious disease experts are conducting an investigation to determine potential human exposures and to assess the general area for additional plague concerns. The people exposed have been identified and have been given preventive antibiotics to prevent plague from developing.

A rare disease suspected to be of âscrub typhusâ has claimed 30 lives, in Alwar district of Rajasthan this season. Another six have died due to a disease with similar symptoms in Dausa. Concerned over the high death count recorded since August 22 this year, the health department has sought the help of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) based in New Delhi. A team has reached the spot to collect blood samples, according to official sources. Scrub typhus can be cured but only if it is timely diagnosed. It is caused by the bite of mites especially during the monsoon season and is reported in areas close to jungles or urban shrubs. Since fever is one of the early symptoms of this disease, wrong or delayed diagnosis is a major worry. Residents claim that the death toll is over 50 but chief medical health officer (CMHO) in Alwar, Dr K K Meena, puts the official figure at 30. In Dausa, six people died recently after showing similar symptoms as scrub typhus which includes high fever and low platelet count. âIn the initial investigation, we have found that some of them had low platelet count accompanied by fever,â said Dr O P Bairwa, CMHO, Dausa.

Halliburton has lost a seven-inch radioactive rod somewhere in the Texas desert. The National Guard has been called in to help to find the device, which employees of the controversial US oilfield services company lost a week ago. The rod, which contains americium-241/beryllium and is stamped with a radiation warning symbol with the words “Danger Radioactive: Do not handle. Notify civil authorities if found”, was lost during a 130-mile journey between oil well sites in Pecos and Odessa last Tuesday. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) warned that the radioactive material “could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them”. The agency said americium-241/beryllium, known as Am-241, is a “category 3” source of radiation and would normally have to be held for some hours before causing health problems.But the NRC still warned that “it could possibly â although it is unlikely â be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of days to weeks”. A spokeswoman for the NRC said the agency could not remember the last time a radioactive rod went missing. “[There has] never been one lost in the public domain,” she said. The spokeswoman added that there was a concern the radioactive material could fall into the hands of terrorists. The route the Halliburton truck took between Pecos and Odessa has been painstakingly searched with radioactive detection gear three times with assistance from local police and the National Guard. “When the crew went to remove the Am-241 source they discovered the source transport container lock and plug were not in place and that the source was missing,” the NRC said in its report into the incident. “The crew returned to the well site near Pecos and searched for the source, but did not find it. The radiation safety officer stated that the lock was found in the storage compartment in the back of the truck. The transport container plug was not in the container.”The three-man Halliburton crew, who had been using the rod to identify oil and gas deposits suitable for fracking, have been questioned by the FBI. The NRC said Halliburton was carrying out a forensic search of the truck. “They are literally stripping it down, removing every piece of equipment looking for the source,” the agency said. Halliburton said it would offer a reward to anyone who finds the rod but cautioned the public to stay at least 25ft away from the device.

A 63-year-old man died Sunday in the Czech Republic after drinking bootleg spirits tainted with methanol, bringing the death toll from an outbreak of alcohol poisoning to 20, hospital staff said. The man was found unconscious Friday at a railway station in the eastern town of Prerov and was hospitalised in a very serious condition. “Despite their efforts, doctors were unable to save him. The man died today a little before noon,” hospital spokeswoman Hana Szotkovska said. Eastern regions of the country have been hit hardest by what Czech experts describe as the worst wave of alcohol poisoning in three decades, but a first case has also been reported in the capital Prague. Around 40 people remained in hospital Sunday from the outbreak, which claimed its first two victims on September 6 and prompted the health minister on Friday to ban the sale of liquor with an alcohol content of over 20 percent. Poland, which borders eastern Czech Republic, on Sunday banned the sale of all alcohol manufactured by its neighbour, except for beer and wine. Czech police have to date charged 22 people in connection with the case. On Friday, they raided thousands of bars, restaurants and shops across the country for traces of bootleg alcohol. Czech police chief Martin Cervicek spoke Sunday of progress in the investigation, telling public radio station CRo1 that officers were on the trail of those who may have supplied the material used to manufacture the spirits.

Sixteen people are trapped after a tunnel along the Daqing-Guangzhou Expressway collapsed Sunday night in east China’s Jiangxi Province, local authorities said Monday. The tunnel, which is still under construction, collapsed at around 10 p.m. in Longnan County in the city of Ganzhou, said rescuers. By Monday noon, the trapped people still had not been found. The tunnel is part of the 3,429 km-expressway that spans from northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province all the way to southern Guangdong Province.

Volcanic Activity

Volcanic activity on Mount Yasur on Tanna Island in Vanuatu, which has been erupting for hundreds of years, has intensified. The Vanuatu Geohazards Observatory has raised its warning regarding Yasur to level two, with expectations of ash and rock falls around the mountain. The volcano reached a level three rating last year, but Vanuatu Geohazards Observatory manager Esline Garaebiti says a threat of that extent is unlikely. However she says people still need to stay clear of the mountain. “This volcano is quite special and the activity is so strong that we maintain it in level two for quite some time and if the explosions are becoming very strong and the projections go further out from the parking area then we will raise the level to level three.”

By Evan Ramstad

Damage from Typhoon Bolaven in North Korea, photographed near Komdok on Aug. 31 by KCNA, released Sept. 7 to EPA for international distribution.

Just as another typhoon headed toward the Korean peninsula, North Korea on Friday summarized the damage from the late summer storm season – 300 dead and another 600 injured or missing.

North Korea’s state news agency said that the worst damage came from the typhoon called Bolaven that swept over the peninsula on Aug. 28 and 29.

That storm alone killed 59 people and left about 26,320 people homeless after about 8,000 houses were destroyed by rain and flooding.

For a country that is so poor and inefficient that each year’s summer storms leave it a disastrous wreck, North Korea provides strikingly precise data about the damage.

Since mid-June, storms and floods damaged or destroyed 87,280 homes and left 298,050 people homeless, its news agency said.

It did not say whether they were temporarily homeless from, say, floodwater, or indeed needed entire new homes.

Among the other damage, 92 drinking water systems were ravaged and 16,900 trees knocked down. “More than 17,150 square meters of railroad were washed away and over 300 sections of railway [were] covered by landslides, with scores of tunnels and railway bridges damaged,” it said.

Now comes Typhoon Sanba, which is heading north from the Philippines toward Okinawa this weekend and the Korean peninsula by Monday. It is a stronger storm than Bolaven, which was billed as the biggest in a decade but didn’t turn out that way.Stars and Stripes reporter Dave Ornauer on Okinawa warns that he’s never seen a storm as intense as Sanba is shaping up to be.

By the time it hits the Korean peninsula, its winds will have died down from Category 4 to Category 2 speeds, he estimates. Even so, both South and North Korea are well-saturated. And North Korea is in no shape for another big storm.

One people got injured and several establishments were partially damaged when a tornado hit a town in Zamboanga Sibugay early today, local officials said. The tornado, which is locally called “buhawi”, hit Poblacion village, the town center of Kabasalan town about 3:30 a.m today, said Mayor George Cainglet. According to the responding police, a driver of a bicycle cab identified as Bebot Baricua, got injured when a flying debris hit him on the street, making him the only victim of the tornado. Besides him, the roofs of the public market, particularly under the wet section, and the roof of the garage area of the town police center were also tore by the tornado, the police added. “The damage was minimal but the residents went panic as a result of the sudden weather disturbance,” disaster officer Adriano Fuego told the press. The authorities estimated that the total damage caused by the tornado is just P200,000 (about $4,800), and the business at the public market was temporarily halted due to the disaster.

Northern Taiwan has seen heavy rainfall Saturday due to the combined effects of seasonal winds and a nearby typhoon, the Central Weather Bureau said. Moisture carried by seasonal winds from the northeast, together with the outer rim of Typhoon Sanba, has caused significant downpours in Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taoyuan County and Yilan County. Xindian District in New Taipei was the hardest-hit area, recording accumulated precipitation of 296 millimeters between midnight and 3 p.m. Saturday, bureau data showed. Rainfall in the areas is likely to continue until Sunday, causing daily minimum temperatures to drop to around 23 degrees Celsius, forecasters said. Meanwhile, strong winds reaching 100 kilometers per hour could be felt in coastal areas across the island due to influence from nearby Sanba. However, the typhoon is not expected to pose further threats to the island as it is heading toward the Ryukyu Islands, the bureau said. As of 2 p.m., Sanba was centered 720 km east of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan, moving at a speed of 23 kph in a north-northwesterly direction. It was packing sustained winds of 191 kph, with gusts reaching 234 kph, the bureau said.

Parts of Manila were under six feet (1.8 metres) of floodwater on Saturday after heavy rain lashed the capital overnight, forcing more than 400 people to flee their homes, officials said. There was also a strong typhoon lurking in the region, and although it was moving away from the Philippines and towards Japan, forecasters said it was adding to the wild weather. “Typhoon (Sanba) has no direct effect but the storm enhanced the southwestern monsoon so we will continue to experience rains,” said government meteorologist Gary de la Cruz. Low-lying coastal areas of the capital were hardest hit, forcing people to leave their homes, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said. At least 10 domestic flights were cancelled and universities in affected areas called off classes, the council said.

Landslides triggered by heavy overnight rain in the hills caused extensive damage in six tea gardens, while the National Highway 31A which was blocked was cleared by the Border Roads Organisation on Saturday. Work had to be stopped for the day in Takdah and Lopchu gardens because of the landslide, while Bannockburn, Phoobshering, Ging and Pussimbing reported loss of tea bushes, Darjeeling Tea Association (DTA) Principal Secretary, Sandip Mukherjee said. “Takdah received around 18 inches of rainfall in the last 24 hours. A 40ft road in Takdah has been washed away in four places and five culverts have been damaged in landslides. There is no approach road to the garden factory now,” Mukherjee said. He said 13 labour quarters and two culverts were affected by the landslides at Lopchu. “Tea bushes in an acre have been uprooted in Lopchu and road connectivity within the garden has become a major problem. Given the extent of the damage, no work could be carried out in Lopchu,” he said. Road communication in the Ging tea garden, about 20km from Darjeeling, was hit after three culverts were damaged. “In Phoobshering, 6,500 tea bushes have been uprooted by the landslides. There is no approach road to the factory now. Water has also seeped into the garden factory,” he said. He alleged that constructions under the 100-days work scheme aggravated the situation in the tea gardens. District Magistrate Saumitra Mohan said “The NH31A was blocked at Tarkhola, Melli and Kalijhora but all major roads have been cleared of debris with the help of agencies like the Border Roads Organisation and the public works department.” Mohan, also the principal secretary of the GTA, said an order has been issued to all subdivisional officers and block divisional officers, that any project was to be cleared only after taking into account environmental concerns and technical viability.

At least 20 people were killed as dozens of houses collapsed following a cloudburst in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand in north India on Friday. Several people are feared trapped under the debris and rescue operations have been launched, Disaster Management and Mitigation department officials said citing initial reports. According to officials, incessant rains since Thursday followed by a cloudburst in the wee hours Friday have left a trail of destruction in Timada, Sansari, Giriya, Chunni and Mangali villages in the district. River Saryu and Kaliganga are flowing above danger mark following rains since Thursday night. Communication and power lines were disrupted and traffic along several roads, including national highways, in the area has been blocked due to landslides, officials said. The local administration has sought the assistance of the Army in view of the large-scale destruction caused by the cloudburst in Rudrap rayag district.

Radiation / Nuclear

Yukio “There is no immediate effect on health” Edano, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry who will have technically lost his portfolio on nuclear issues come September 19 (when the new Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Goshi Hosono’s ministry takes over the nuclear regulatory oversight from NISA), approved the resumption of construction of two new reactors.

So much for the Noda administration’s “pledge” to have zero nuclear power plant operating in 2030. (We’re just shocked. Shocked, aren’t we?)

On September 15, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yukio Edano held a meeting in Aomori City with Governor of Aomori Prefecture Shingo Mimura and the mayors of municipalities where nuclear facilities are located, and told them that he would allow the resumption of construction and operation of Ooma Nucleaer Power Plant by Electric Power Development Co.,Ltd. (in Ooma-cho, Aomori Prefecture) and Reactor 3 of Shimane Nucleaer Power Plant by Chugoku Electric Power Company (in Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture).

両原発の建設が再開されれば、震災後初めての原発建設となる。

It would be the first construction of nuclear reactors after the March 11, 2011 disaster.

In the “Revolutionary strategy for energy and environment” that was agreed upon on September 14, the national government clearly set the target to have zero nuclear reactors operating in 2030. If the government rule of 40 years of operation is applied, these nuclear reactors would be allowed to operate into 2050, which would be a contradiction to the new energy strategy.

Mr. Edano said in the meeting, “As to the nuclear power plants with permits for installing a reactor and for construction plan, we as Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry are not thinking of any change”, indicating the intention to allow the resumption of construction and operation once the Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirms safety. The Commission will be installed on September 19.

In addition to Ooma Nuclear Power Plant and Reactor 3 of Shimane Nuclear Power Plant, Reactor 1 of Higashidori Nuclear Power Plant is also under construction by TEPCO (in Higashidori-mura, Aomori Prefecture). However, Mr. Edano said of Higashidori’s Reactor 1, “TEPCO is not in a position yet to discuss nuclear energy”, indicating that the resumption of construction of Higashidori Reactor 1 would be unlikely at this time.

Space

Electromagnetic Event: Magnetic Pole Shift Could Be In Progress

There are two dangers presented in this video: 1) The Electromagnetic Event; and 2) The Mega Solar Flare & CME – Music: Instrumental “Soul Survivor” by Akon & Young Jeezy

HAARP:
Emotional & behavioral suppression technology, Silent Sound Spread Spectrum technology, and weather modification are dangerous, unethical, a secret in their truest form, and don’t have a damn thing to do with HAARP — This is what you should know:
1) Things not caused by HAARP: Long Solar Minimum, Jupiter/Saturn Storms, Saturn/Venus Rotation Anomalies, New Radio Emission from Jupiter, Uranus Auroras, the ENA ribbon, and most importunely, earth’s shifting N pole and fading Magnetic Shield. [There is a natural event taking place]
2) Weather Modification that is not HAARP: Radar Rings are different [local VLFs can do it without any help from HAARP], see video called ‘Standing Wave Tank” to see how LF work better on water vapor than HF. Some rings are man made with VLF, others are a natural effect of the EM event; I believe we are trying to stop it.
3) Potential Danger of HAARP: Over-ionization of certain layers or regions, Creating Ozone holes, Increasing our Solar Vulnerability.
4) ****HAARP and the Russian/Norwegian Devices are directly under the auroral electrojet, which is the thing that would kill our grids in a solar storm. The devices are ionospheric heaters capable of expanding the electrojet and scattering the energy.

NIBIRU:
What can I say, there is no star coming in here. That would kill us, and wouldn’t have left any planets here if it had come before. The term ‘dark star’ is a misnomer, it’s not so dark you wouldn’t see it. There IS a possibility that we could see a crossing ‘planet’, but not a star. Here are those possibilities, google will help fill in the blanks.
1) Hypothetical Planet Vulcan [not star trek] happens to be real and comes out from behind the sun.
2) Rogue Planet enters our system. [they outnumber stars in our galaxy]
3) Planetary ‘Birthing’ process where a baby planet comes out of the Sun, Saturn, or Jupiter.
4) A Return to the World described in ‘Symbols of an Alien Sky’
[All but #2 could be lumped in together as caused by an electromagnetic event; I worry this is what is happening now– Sitchen made many documented errors, and it was the Maya, not the Sumerians, who spoke of 2012]

Biological Hazards / Wildlife / Hazmat

The highly infectious and sometimes fatal Foot and Mouth Disease infections have been traced in livestock in the Nyingtri region of central Tibet. According to the regional agricultural ministry, a total of 123 live head of cattle and 108 pigs have showed symptoms associated with FMD. After collecting samples, the Chinese National Foot-and-Mouth Disease Reference Laboratory on Thursday confirmed that the livestock were infected with type O FMD. The local authorities have “sealed off and sterilised the infected area, where a total of 612 head of cattle and pigs have been culled and safely disposed of in order to prevent the disease from spreading since the case was confirmed.” While “quietly sending military troops to kill and burry the cattle,” Chinese authorities did not reveal the outbreak to the public. “Insiders say the provincial officials ordered the cover-up in fear that their records might be affected. Further investigation confirmed the disease to be a special type of FMD resistant to the current vaccine.” Following an outbreak of FMD in China’s eastern provinces of Shandong and Jiangsu, which later spread to suburban Beijing in 2005, China had for the first time reported FMD outbreak to the World Health Organisation. FMD is an acute contagious febrile disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids. The disease can potentially cost huge economic loss to farming and nomadic families who make their living from livestock.

A large portion of the southside of MIshawaka, Ind. was evacuated overnight after a chemical spill. Firefighters were called to 1302 Industrial Drive just after 8 p.m. after receiving a call of smoke coming out of a vacant building. The building used to be the home of Baycote Metal Finishing. After the fire was out, a firefighter noticed a low hanging vapor cloud in the building and immediately evacuated the area. The area includes about fifty homes, including an assisted living center. WSBT reports about 200 people were evacuated. The Red Cross set up a shelter for evacuees. Residents reported irritated skin and itchy eyes. Officials say this will be a major clean-up effort. This is a developing story. We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.

The Czech Republic has banned the sale of spirits with more than 20 percent alcohol content as it battles a wave of methanol poisonings that has already killed 19 people. Health Minister Leos Heger says the unprecedented ban is effective immediately and applies nationwide. It covers all possible sales locations, including restaurants, hotels and stores. Kiosks and markets had earlier been banned from selling spirits with more than 30 percent alcohol content. In a brief announcement late Friday, Heger said the measure was taken as the death toll from the poisonings reached 19 and the first person was hospitalized in Prague. Dozens of people have been hospitalized, some in critical condition after drinking vodka and rum laced with methanol. The problem appears largely centered in northeastern Czech Republic.

IU/YSS, Yuzhno Sakhalinsk, Russia

Volcanic Activity

Guatemala volcano: At least 17 villages near the Volcan del Fuego, six miles from the colonial city of Antigua, are being evacuated. The eruption of the volcano could cause a disruption in airline flights in and out of Guatemala.

By Alberto Arce and Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, Associated Press

Plumes of dark smoke rise from the Volcan de Fuego ( Volcano of Fire) as seen from Palin, south of Guatemala City, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012. Officials are carrying out “a massive evacuation of thousands of people” in five communities.

(AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Guatemala City

A long-simmering volcano outside one of the Guatemala‘s most famous tourist attractions exploded into a series of powerful eruptions Thursday, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks and forcing the evacuation of more than 33,000 people from surrounding communities.

Guatemala’s head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the evacuees were leaving some 17 villages around the Volcan del Fuego, which sits about six miles southwest (16 kilometers) from the colonial city of Antigua. The ash was blowing south and authorities said Antigua was not currently in danger, although they expected the eruption to last for at least 12 more hours.

The agency said the volcano spewed lava nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) down slopes billowing with ash around Acatenango, a 12,346-foot-high (3,763-meter-high) volcano whose name translates as “Volcano of Fire.”

“A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash,” said Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology. He said the cinders spewing from the volcano were settling a half-inch thick in many places.

He said extremely hot gases were also rolling down the sides of the volcano, which was entirely wreathed in ash and smoke. The emergency agency warned that flights through the area could be affected.

There was a general orange alert, the second-highest level, but a red alert south and southeast of the mountain, where, Chicna said, “it’s almost in total darkness.”

Teresa Marroquin, disaster coordinator for the Guatemalan Red Cross, said the organization had set up 10 emergency shelters and was sending hygiene kits and water. “There are lots of respiratory problems and eye problems,” she said.

At least 17 villages near the Volcan del Fuego, six miles from the colonial city of Antigua, are being evacuated. The eruption of the volcano could cause a disruption in airline flights in and out of Guatemala. A long-simmering volcano outside one of the Guatemala’s most famous tourist attractions exploded into a series of powerful eruptions Thursday, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks and forcing the evacuation of more than 33,000 people from surrounding communities. Guatemala’s head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the evacuees were leaving some 17 villages around the Volcan del Fuego, which sits about six miles southwest (16 kilometers) from the colonial city of Antigua. The ash was blowing south and authorities said Antigua was not currently in danger, although they expected the eruption to last for at least 12 more hours.

The agency said the volcano spewed lava nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) down slopes billowing with ash around Acatenango, a 12,346-foot-high (3,763-meter-high) volcano whose name translates as “Volcano of Fire.” “A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash,” said Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology. He said the cinders spewing from the volcano were settling a half-inch thick in many places. He said extremely hot gases were also rolling down the sides of the volcano, which was entirely wreathed in ash and smoke. The emergency agency warned that flights through the area could be affected. There was a general orange alert, the second-highest level, but a red alert south and southeast of the mountain, where, Chicna said, “it’s almost in total darkness.” Teresa Marroquin, disaster coordinator for the Guatemalan Red Cross, said the organization had set up 10 emergency shelters and was sending hygiene kits and water. “There are lots of respiratory problems and eye problems,” she said.

Extreme Temperatures/ Weather / Drought

In the summer of 2002, pinyon pines began dying in large numbers from drought stress and an associated bark beetle outbreak. This aerial photo was taken near Los Alamos, N.M. Credit: Craig D. Allen, USGS.

As temperatures rise and droughts become more severe in the Southwest, trees are increasingly up against extremely stressful growing conditions, especially in low to middle elevations, University of Arizona researchers report in a study soon to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences.

Lead author Jeremy Weiss, a senior research specialist in the UA department of geosciences, said: “We know the climate in the Southwest is getting warmer, but we wanted to investigate how the higher temperatures might interact with the highly variable precipitation typical of the region.”

Weiss’ team used a growing season index computed from weather data to examine limits to plant growth during times of drought.

“The approach we took allows us to model and map potential plant responses to droughts under past, present and future conditions across the whole region,” explained Julio Betancourt, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who co-authored the study along with Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the UA Institute of the Environment. Betancourt holds adjunct appointments in the UA department of geosciences, the UA School of Geography and Development, the UA School of Natural Resources and the Environment and the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

For this study, the researchers used a growing season index that considers day length, cold temperature limits and a key metric called vapor pressure deficit to map and compare potential plant responses to major regional droughts during 1953-56 and 2000-03.

A key source of plant stress, vapor pressure deficit is defined as the difference between how much moisture the air can hold when it is saturated and the amount of moisture actually present in the air. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, and during droughts it acts like a sponge sucking up any available moisture from the ground surface, including from plants.

Both droughts – with the more recent one occurring in warmer times – led to widespread tree die-offs, and comparisons between them can help sort out how both warming and drying affected the degree of mortality in different areas.

Weiss pointed out that multiyear droughts with precipitation well below the long-term average are normal for the Southwest. He said the 1950s drought mainly affected the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and southern High Plains and happened before warming in the region started. The 2000s drought centered on the Four Corners area and occurred after regional warming began around 1980.

The actual causes of physiological plant stress and tree death during droughts are being investigated by various research teams using models and field and greenhouse experiments. One possibility is prolonged embolism, or the catastrophic disruption of the water column in wood vessels as trees struggle to pump moisture from the soil in the heat of summer.

The other is carbon starvation as leaves shut their openings, called stomates, to conserve leaf water, slowing the uptake of carbon dioxide needed for photosynthesis. Stomatal closure is triggered by deficits in the ambient vapor pressure, which controls the rate of evaporation for water and is very much influenced by temperature.

“When the air is hotter and drier, it becomes more difficult for plants to conserve water while taking up carbon dioxide,” Weiss explained. “As plants become starved of carbon, it also weakens their defenses and renders them more susceptible to insect pests.”

To make matters worse, Weiss said, the size of the “atmospheric sponge” grows faster during increasingly hotter summers like those over the last 30 years, absorbing even more moisture from soil and vegetation.

“When warmer temperatures combine with drought, relatively stressful growing conditions for a plant become even more stressful,” Weiss explained. “You could say drought makes that atmospheric sponge thirstier, and as the drought progresses, there is increasingly less moisture that can be evaporated from soil and vegetation to fill – and cool – the dry air.”

“In a sense, it’s a vicious circle. Warmer temperatures during droughts lead to even drier and hotter conditions.”

The researchers mapped relatively extreme values of vapor deficit pressure for areas of tree die-offs during the most recent drought determined from annual aerial surveys conducted by the U.S. Forest Service.

“Our study suggests that as regional warming continues, drought-related plant stress associated with higher vapor pressure deficits will intensify and spread from late spring through summer to earlier and later parts of the growing season, as well to higher elevations,” the authors write. This could lead to even more severe and widespread plant stress.

The results are in line with other trends of warming-related impacts in the Southwest over the past 30 years, including earlier leafout and flowering, more extensive insect and disease outbreaks, and an increase in large wildfires.

“We’re seeing climatic growing conditions already at an extreme level with just the relatively little warming we have seen in the region so far,” Weiss said. “Our concern is that vegetation will experience even more extreme growing conditions as anticipated further warming exacerbates the impacts of future droughts.”

Weiss added: “We also know that part of the regional warming is linked to human-caused climate change. Seeing vapor-pressure deficits at such extreme levels points to the conclusion that the warmer temperatures linked to human-caused climate change are playing a role in drying out the region.”

Betancourt said: “We have few ways of knowing how this is going to affect plants across an entire landscape, except by modeling it. There is not much we can do to avert drought-related tree mortality, whether it is due to climate variability or climate change.”

Instead, Betancourt suggested, land managers should focus on how to manage the regrowth of vegetation in the aftermath of increased large-scale ecological disturbances, including wildfires and drought-related tree die-offs.

“Models like the one we developed can provide us with a roadmap of areas sensitive to future disturbances,” Betancourt said. “The next step will be to start planning, determine the scale of intervention and figure out what can be done to direct or engineer the outcomes of vegetation change in a warmer world.”

NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Super Typhoon Sanba on Sept. 13 at 12:47 a.m. EDT. AIRS infrared data found an eye (the yellow dot in the middle of the purple area) about 20 nautical miles wide, surrounded by a thick area of strong thunderstorms (purple) with very cold cloud temperatures. Credit: Ed Olsen, NASA/JPL Tropical Storm Sanba exploded in intensity between Sept. 12 and 13, becoming a major Category 4 Typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. NASA’s Aqua satellite captured infrared data that showed a large area of powerful thunderstorms around the center of circulation, dropping heavy rain over the western North Pacific Ocean.

NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Super Typhoon Sanba on Sept. 13 at 0447 UTC (12:47 a.m. EDT). The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of Sanba and found an eye about 20 nautical miles (23 miles/37 km) wide, surrounded by a thick area of strong convection (rising air that forms the thunderstorms that make up the storm) and strong thunderstorms. Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning center noted that the AIRS imagery showed that there was “no banding outside of this ring, consistent with an annular typhoon.” On Sept. 13 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Sanba’s maximum sustained winds were near 135 knots (155 mph/250 kmh). Sanba had higher gusts into the Category 5 typhoon category. The Saffir-Simpson scale was slightly revised earlier in 2012, so a Category 4 typhoon/hurricane has maximum sustained winds from 113 to 136 knots (130 to 156 mph /209 to 251 kmh). A Category 5 typhoon’s maximum sustained winds begin at 137 knots (157 mph /252 kmh). Sanba was located about 600 nautical miles (690 miles/1,111 km) south of Kadena Air Base, near 16.8 North latitude and 129.5 East longitude. It was moving to the north at 9 knots (10.3 mph/16.6 kmh) and generating wave heights of 40 feet. Sanba is expected to continue on a north-northwesterly track through the western North Pacific and move through the East China Sea, passing close to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan on Sept. 15. Provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center search and more info website

Rare Reversal Last Occurred with Hurricane Katrina

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GettyImages

People brave the rain and strong winds for a walk along the banks of the Mississippi River in New Orleans early in the day on August 28, 2012 in Louisiana, where Hurricane Isaac made landfall. Starting in the late afternoon, the river reversed course and began flowing away from the Gulf of Mexico.

Most of the time, rivers large and small are as consistent as the tides, flowing from their headwaters to their mouths, where they empty into oceans, lakes, seas and valleys. For nearly 24 hours during Hurricane Isaac, however, exactly the opposite happened in the mighty Mississippi River.

The category 1 storm’s intense winds and storm surge, which came ashore near New Orleans on Aug. 28, pushed salt water from the Gulf of Mexico up the fresh water river as far north as Baton Rouge, more than 200 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, surging the river there more than 8 feet over its previous height.

During the night in Belle Chase, La., just south of New Orleans, the U.S. Geological Survey’s stream gage measured the river flowing backwards at 182,000 cubic feet per second. Normally, the river flows at about 125,000 cubic feet per second toward the Gulf of Mexico.

Play Video

Cantore Talks About Isaac

“One of the unique things about Isaac was that, unlike most storms that tend to blow on through, Isaac ended up hanging around for a while,” said USGS Public Affairs Officer Alex Demas. “Because it hung around for a while, the storm surge built up enough momentum that it was able to push the river back up its channel.”

The Mississippi last flowed backward during 2005’s devastating Hurricane Katrina, when it crested at 13 feet above its previous level. At its highest point during Isaac, the river crested at 12.4 feet above its previous level.

“We saw an impact as far as 300 miles upstream from the mouth,” from Isaac’s surge up the river, said Greg Arcement, the director of the USGS Louisiana Water Science Center in Baton Rouge. “It had actually quite an impact when you think about it.”

What had officials concerned wasn’t just the impacts from storm surge, however. By the time Isaac arrived, severe drought throughout the Midwest had left the Mississippi several feet below its normal levels, which meant that salt water moving upstream from the ocean might easily overpower the depleted fresh water in the river.

Keeping Salt Water from Moving Up

Salt water is heavier than fresh water. When surging salt water meets fresh water that’s been laid low by a months-long drought, the salt water can travel upstream to places it normally doesn’t, explains Suzanne Van Cooten, Ph.D., a hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center.

“It’s very similar to how a cold front and a warm front work,” she said. “It basically works like a wedge — as the column of fresh water gets shallower because we’re in low flow, it has less weight. So the salt water is able to push underneath the fresh water and just move on up, because it doesn’t have as much weight to displace.”

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Denser salt water flows upstream along the bottom of the Mississippi River, underneath the less dense fresh river water.

That creates what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers calls a “salt water wedge.” If it moves up far enough along the Mississippi, the wedge can threaten cities and towns that rely on the river for their drinking water as well as industrial water supplies.

To prevent that, the Corps periodically builds a saltwater barrier sill, a kind of underwater levee, made from earth along the banks of the river and sandbars exposed by the drought. The sill stops the toe of the wedge from moving forward.

“It’s basically a speed bump at the bottom of the river, to prevent the salt water from moving upstream,” explains Dave Ramirez, the lead hydraulic engineer with the Corps’ New Orleans District.

The Corps builds these sills about every 7 to 8 years, and they work well in normal conditions. Fears rose sharply that Isaac would destroy this one when the storm approached, however.

“The toe of the wedge was about up to river mile 89 [before the storm], which is about the limit of where we want to see it,” said Ramirez, explaining that the wedge was about 89 miles up the river from the mouth of the Mississippi. “We didn’t really know if the sill would hold, because we’ve never had a salt water wedge during a hurricane.”

Thankfully, Isaac left the sill undisturbed. After the storm passed, Ramirez and his team inspected the salt water wedge and determined that it had actually regressed 20 miles back downstream, where he said it was expected to remain for the next few weeks.

After six days of heavy rains, floodwaters are threatening Sindh and the army has moved in to rescue people in the worst-hit areas. The death toll of rain-related mishaps has crossed 100, as 18 more people died on Wednesday. After record-breaking rain in Jacobabad and Kashmore, thousands of people are stranded in the low-lying areas, where, according to reports, five to six feet water has accumulated. Torrents coming downhill from Balochistan have played havoc with ten union councils in the Thull taluka of Jacobabad. As hundreds of houses collapsed due to flooding, at least 18 people, including women and children, were reported to have died. Another 78 were reportedly injured. On Wednesday, hundreds of army personnel were dispatched to the rain-hit areas, including RD-44 and Bahoo Khoso, where thousands of people have been stranded for the past five days. In Ghotki, a teenage girl was crushed by a wall in the Katcho Bhindi area. A three-year-old girl, Kariman, drowned in rainwater in Rehmoonwali. Rainwater has also entered the Shahi Wah and Pat Feeder canals, breaching both in at least four places. The water is now heading towards the outskirts of Jacobabad. Relief camps have been set up in Shikarpur, Jacobabad and Kashmore. The people are, however, reluctant to go to the camps as neither food nor medicines are available. The district administrations have arranged cooked meals for the rain-hit people, but instead of being distributed among them, the food is being taken away by the influential.

iWitness: Las Vegas Flooding

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AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, John Locher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas students relax on inflatable pool toys in floodwater at UNLV in Las Vegas Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012. Storms drenched parts of the Southwest on Tuesday, delaying flights and stranding motorists in the Las Vegas area and flooding two mobile home parks in Southern California.

Television news video showed yellow school buses inching along roads after school in areas east of downtown Las Vegas, and muddy brown water up to the lower sills of picture windows of stucco homes in other neighborhoods.

In southeast Las Vegas, authorities recommended that the residents of about 45 homes damaged by flooding should leave in case the damage start electrical fires. The Clark County Fire Department was going door-to-door Tuesday night suggesting that residents leave their homes, said county spokesman Dan Kulin.

A Twitter photo showed dozens of cars swamped by water up to their headlights in a parking lot outside the Thomas & Mack sports arena at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

But after responding to numerous 911 calls, officials in Clark County, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Las Vegas said no serious injuries were reported.
The National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings before and after almost an inch of rain was reported at McCarran International Airport just before 2 p.m. Meteorologist Michael Staudenmaier said more than 1.75 inches of rain were reported in downtown Las Vegas.

September 11, 2012 was the wettest September day on record in Las Vegas, according to weather.com meteorologist Nick Wiltgen. The city received 1.18″ of rain.

Firefighters responded to more than 20 calls about people in stalled cars, Kulin said.

A Las Vegas police helicopter was dispatched during the height of the storm to pluck several people from swamped vehicles on area roadways, Officer Bill Cassell said.

The Las Vegas area is crisscrossed with concrete-lined flood control channels and pocked by lake-sized water retention basins. Since 1985, Clark County Regional Flood Control District officials say they’ve spent $1.7 billion constructing about 573 miles of storm drains and 90 basins.

Police officer Jose Hernandez noted that homeless people sometimes live in normally dry tunnels beneath key areas like the Las Vegas Strip. After rains fall, the channels and tunnels fill quickly as water flows west to east across Las Vegas toward the Lake Mead reservoir on the Colorado River.

Crews searched in vain along a wash northeast of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after at least two callers separately reported that they saw a person in the water during the height of the storm.

Departures were postponed and arrivals were delayed after the airport ordered a stop on fueling operations during lightning, airport spokeswoman Linda Healey said.

Staudenmaier said the rainfall amounts put the region on pace to exceed the 4.5 inches of rain it normally gets in a year.

Between early July and early September 2012, flooding claimed an estimated 137 lives in Nigeria and forced thousands more to relocate, according to Reuters. In addition to the challenges posed by heavy rains, Nigerians had to cope with the release of water from the Lagdo Dam in neighboring Cameroon, which further swelled the Benue River. Flooding from the dam release was blamed for 30 deaths in Nigeria, Agence France-Presse reported.

These images show a stretch of the Benue River in eastern Nigeria, around the city of Lau. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image on September 8, 2012. For comparison, the bottom image shows the same area nearly three years earlier, on September 23, 2009. These images use a combination of visible and infrared light to better distinguish between water and land. Water varies from electric blue to navy, vegetation is bright green, and clouds range in color from nearly white to pale blue-green.

In 2009, the Benue River was a relatively thin river bordered by small, isolated water bodies. Three years later, the river had spilled over its banks, engulfing the small lakes on either side. Flood waters often carry heavy loads of sediment, and such sediment might account for the relatively light shades of blue along part of the river.

Despite thousands of displaced residents, no major damage to agriculture and industry had yet been reported, Reuters stated.

Epidemic Hazards / Diseases

An Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo risks spreading to major towns if not brought under control soon, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.

The death toll has more than doubled since last week to 31, including five health workers dying from the contagious virus for which there is no known treatment. Ebola causes massive bleeding and kills up to 90 percent of its victims.

“The epidemic is not under control. On the contrary the situation is very, very serious,” Eugene Kabambi, a WHO spokesman in Congo’s capital Kinshasa told Reuters by telephone.

“If nothing is done now, the disease will reach other places, and even major towns will be threatened,” he said.

The disease has so far struck in the towns of Isiro and Viadana in Orientale province in the north east.

In August, 16 people in neighboring Uganda died of the disease, although health experts said the two epidemics are not connected and have blamed the Congolese outbreak on villagers eating contaminated meat in the forests which cover the region.

(Reporting by Jonny Hogg; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by David Lewis and Robin Pomeroy)

MessageToEagle.com – ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile presents a beautiful Herschel’s Ray commnonly known as the Pencil Nebula – a part of the Vela Supernova Remnant.

This peculiar cloud of glowing gas is part of a huge ring of wreckage left over after a supernova explosion that took place about 11 000 years ago. This detailed view was produced by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope.

Despite the tranquil and apparently unchanging beauty of a starry night, the Universe is far from being a quiet place. Stars are being born and dying in an endless cycle, and sometimes the death of a star can create a vista of unequalled beauty as material is blasted out into space to form strange structures in the sky.

Click on image to enlargeWide-field view of the sky around the Pencil Nebula. Credits: ESO
This new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the Pencil Nebula against a rich starry background. This oddly shaped cloud, which is also known as NGC 2736, is a small part of a supernova remnant in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails).

These glowing filaments were created by the violent death of a star that took place about 11 000 years ago. The brightest part resembles a pencil; hence the name, but the whole structure looks rather more like a traditional witch’s broom.

The Vela supernova remnant is an expanding shell of gas that originated from the supernova explosion. Initially the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometres per hour, but as it expanded through space it ploughed through the gas between the stars, which has slowed it considerably and created strangely shaped folds of nebulosity.

The Pencil Nebula is the brightest part of this huge shell.

Click on image to enlargeThe Pencil Nebula, a strangely shaped leftover from a vast explosion. Credits: ESO
This new image shows large, wispy filamentary structures, smaller bright knots of gas and patches of diffuse gas. The nebula’s luminous appearance comes from dense gas regions that have been struck by the supernova shock wave. As the shock wave travels through space, it rams into the interstellar material.

At first, the gas was heated to millions of degrees, but it then subsequently cooled down and is still giving off the faint glow that was captured in the new image.

By looking at the different colours of the nebula, astronomers have been able to map the temperature of the gas. Some regions are still so hot that the emission is dominated by ionised oxygen atoms, which glow blue in the picture. Other cooler regions are seen glowing red, due to emission from hydrogen.

The Pencil Nebula measures about 0.75 light-years across and is moving through the interstellar medium at about 650 000 kilometres per hour. Remarkably, even at its distance of approximately 800 light-years from Earth, this means that it will noticeably change its position relative to the background stars within a human lifetime.

Even after 11 000 years the supernova explosion is still changing the face of the night sky.

Less than two decades after wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, viral diseases like mange threaten the stability of the new population.

Humans had killed off gray wolves in the region by the 1930s, but in 1995, U.S. wildlife officials tried to restore the native population by bringing 31 wolves captured from Canada into the national park.

The new wolf community initially expanded rapidly, climbing to more than 170 at its peak. But researchers from Penn State University say that the most recent data show the number of animals has dipped below 100.

“We’re down to extremely low levels of wolves right now,” researcher Emily S. Almberg, a graduate student in ecology, said in a statement. “We’re down to [similar numbers as] the early years of reintroduction. So it doesn’t look like it’s going to be as large and as a stable a population as was maybe initially thought.”

The researchers point to pathogens as the culprit in the population’s instability. By 1997, all of the new wolves at the park that were tested for disease had at least one infection, including canine distemper, canine parvovirus and canine herpesvirus. Starting in 2007, wolves inside the park were testing positive for mange — an infection in which mites burrow under the skin causing insatiable scratching and so much hair loss that infected wolves often freeze to death in the winter.

A group of wolves known as Mollie’s pack was the first in Yellowstone to show signs of mange, in January 2007, but they recovered from the disease by March 2011. Meanwhile, another group, called the Druid pack — once one of the park’s most stable new packs — was decimated by the end of winter 2010 after showing signs of mange just half a year earlier, the researchers said.

“It was in a very short amount of time that the majority of the animals [in Druid] became severely infected,” Almberg said in a statement. “The majority of their hair was missing from their bodies and it hit them right in the middle of winter. The summer before it got really bad, we saw that many of the pups had mange.”

The Penn State researchers found that distance made a difference in the spread of the disease. For every six miles between a pack of mangy wolves and an uninfected pack, there was a 66 percent drop in risk of disease for the healthy pack, the researchers said. Thus the high wolf densities afforded by protection within Yellowstone may come at the cost of some population stability, the researchers wrote in their paper in the current issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Mange was introduced into the Yellowstone ecosystem in 1905 in an attempt to accelerate wolf eradication during an era when wildlife officials tried to cut down predator populations. When the wolves were gone, the disease likely persisted among regional carnivores, like coyotes and foxes, the researchers said.

“Many invasive species flourish because they lack their native predators and pathogens, but in Yellowstone we restored a native predator to an ecosystem that had other canids (animals in the dog family) present that were capable of sustaining a lot of infections in their absence,” said Almberg. “It’s not terribly surprising that we were able to witness and confirm that there was a relatively short window in which the reintroduced wolves stayed disease-free.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services is looking for piece of equipment containing potentially dangerous radioactive material that was lost Tuesday by an oil and gas crew in a rural part of West Texas. The sealed radioactive source, a small stainless steel cylinder approximately 7 inches long and an inch across, contains Americium-241/Beryllium….The cylinder is stamped with the words “danger radioactive” and “do not handle” along with a radiation warning symbol. Anyone who sees it should stay at least 25 feet away and notify local law enforcement. This type of device is used to evaluate oil and gas wells and is usually stored in a protective shielding. A Halliburton crew was transporting it from a well outside of Pecos to another well south of Odessa. On arrival, the crew noticed the shielding was not locked and the device was missing. DSHS is assisting law enforcement with the search and investigating the loss of the radioactive material.

Czech police say they have discovered two possible sources of methanol poisoning that has killed at least 18 people. About 400 liters (106 gallons) of illegal alcohol was seized and two male suspects arrested in the northeastern part of the country where most victims lived. Around 500 bottles and several barrels of illicit booze have been found in a garage in the eastern city of Zlin on Thursday. Methanol tests still have to be conducted. Health Minister Leos Heger said Thursday a majority of alcohol samples taken elsewhere that have been tested so far contained dangerous levels of methanol that is mainly used for industrial purposes. About two dozen people are hospitalized, some in critical condition after drinking vodka and rum laced with methanol.

Articles of Interest

A platform elevator at a construction site in southern China has dropped 30 floors in a free fall, killing 19 workers. The accident happened Thursday in Wuhan city in Hubei province. A government notice posted by local Wuhan newspapers on their official microblogging sites says the elevator fell 100 meters (328 feet). It says the municipal government is halting all construction in Wuhan for security checks. Work safety is a big problem in China, where regulations are routinely ignored.

Magnitudes and frequencies should decrease in the coming days, experts say.

Tico Times

The National Seismological Network released this map with the aftershocks registered from September 5. Courtesy of RSN

The latest report from the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (Ovsicori), released Monday morning, states that 1,650 aftershocks have been registered since the magnitude-7.6 earthquake that hit the country last Wednesday.

The strongest aftershock was felt Saturday, with a magnitude of 5.6. However, it was felt only in the Central Valley.

Ovsicori seismologist Walter Jiménez said the aftershocks will continue in upcoming days, but he also stated that the magnitudes and frequencies of them will go down, ranging from 2 to 3 in magnitude.

Experts confirmed the Sept. 5 magnitude-7.6 earthquake was the ‘Big One’ they’ve been expecting, but the fault rupture was only of 50 percent.

After a series of analyses conducted in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, experts from the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (Ovsicori) reported Tuesday that another quake of equal or greater magnitude could occur in Nicoya Peninsula, but predicting when it would happen is “impossible .”

Marino Protti, Ovsicori’s lead scientist, explained that the magintude-7.6 earthquake on Sept. 5 caused a 40 percent slip and an inclination of 1.8 meters on the fault located in Nicoya.

He also said that although the quake was the “big one” experts had been expecting for Guanacaste, the fault ruptured by only 50 percent, meaning that the possibility that another earthquake of equal or greater magnitude in the area still remains.

Ovsicori’s report, released Tuesday, also stated that the earthquake triggered the activation of three faults in Aguas Zarcas (in the northern region), the Guanacaste Volcanic Area and Irazú Volcano (north of Cartago). Seismologists will continue monitoring the areas.

By Tuesday morning, the total count of aftershocks from the recent earthquake was 1,650. On Sept. 5 at 8:42 a.m., the 7.6-magnitude earthquake shook the country and was felt as far away as Nicaraguan and Panama. Its epicenter was located 20 kilometers northwest of Sámara in the Nicoya Península.

IU/YSS, Yuzhno Sakhalinsk, Russia

Volcanic Activity

krakatau 2012 September Eruption

Anak Krakatau had the largest eruption in over 10 years on the 2nd of September 2012. I visited the volcano on the 8th of September to check out the action. Lots of smoke, warm lava and new land had been generated.

Ongoing activity by Indonesia’s Mount Anak Krakatau has residents of nearby coastal areas concerned as the volcano spewed more lava, officials said. On Monday the volcano in the Sunda Strait spewed hot lava and other volcanic material 2,000 feet above its peak, the Antara news agency reported. “Tremors have not stopped rocking this area since yesterday,” Hamdani, the head of the volcano monitoring post in the village of Hargopancuran, South Lampung, said. Black clouds were obscuring the peak of the volcano, Hamdani said. Officials warned fishermen to stay away from the volcano although they said the ongoing tremors would not cause a tsunami.

Activity in the San Cristobal volcano in Nicaragua has calmed a day after three loud explosions were accompanied by a huge eruption of ash and gas that led officials to evacuate about 3,000 people from nine nearby communities. Officials say the area remains under an alert. Nicaragua’s geological institute says sporadic explosions have been heard Sunday and occasional ash columns have billowed up to heights between 4,950 feet and 16,500 feet. On Saturday, the 5,740-foot volcano spewed out clouds of ash that traveled 31 miles. San Cristobal has been active since 1520.

Extreme Temperatures/ Weather

Summer 2012 was the third hottest summer on record for the contiguous United States since recordkeeping began in 1895. According to the latest statistics from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the average temperature for the contiguous United States between June and August was over 74° Fahrenheit, which is more than 2° F above the twentieth-century average. Only the summers of 2011 and 1936 have had higher summer temperatures for the Lower 48.

Reds show June-August temperatures up to 8° F warmer than average. Blues show temperatures up to 2° F cooler than average—the darker the color, the larger the difference. (Map by NOAA climate.gov team, based on U.S. Climate Division Data from the National Climatic Data Center.)

These maps show patterns of temperature (above) and precipitation (below) across the United States from June through August 2012 compared to the recent long-term average (1981-2010). The summer season was warmer than average for a large portion of contiguous United States, with the Southeast and parts of the Northwest being exceptions. Sixteen states across the West, Plains, and Upper Midwest had summer temperatures among their ten warmest. Colorado and Wyoming each had their record-hottest summer, and much of the Northeast was warmer than average, with seven states from New Hampshire to Maryland having a top-ten-warmest summer.

Browns indicate areas that received less than 100 percent of average June-August precipitation, while greens indicate up to 200 percent of average. (Map by NOAA climate.gov team, based on U.S. Climate Division Data from the National Climatic Data Center.)

Drier-than-average conditions prevailed across much of the central United States, from the Rocky Mountains to the Ohio Valley. Nebraska’s summer precipitation was almost 6 inches below average, and Wyoming’s precipitation was more than 2 inches below average, marking the driest summer on record for both states. Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, and New Mexico had summer precipitation totals among their ten driest.

However, the summer was wetter than average across the West Coast, the Gulf Coast, and New England. Florida had its wettest summer on record, partially driven by Tropical Storm Debby in June and Hurricane Isaac in August. The total statewide summer precipitation was almost 9 inches above the long-term average. In addition, Louisiana and Mississippi each had one of their ten-wettest summer seasons.

A comparison of drought maps* from August 28 (left) and September 4 (right) show how little relief Hurricane Isaac (estimated track shown by blue line) brought to parched states in the central U.S. A handful of states in the Lower Mississippi and Lower Ohio Valleys saw modest improvements. Maps by NOAA Climate.gov team, based on U.S. Drought Monitor Data.) *Update: This is an updated version of the image, with a more accurate estimate of the track of Isaac through the Lower Mississippi Valley. See original.

The U.S. Climate Extremes Index (USCEI), an index that tracks the highest and lowest 10 percent of extremes in temperature, precipitation, drought, and tropical cyclones across the contiguous U.S. was more than one and a half times the average value during summer 2012, and marked the eighth largest USCEI value for the season. Extremes in warm daytime temperatures, warm nighttime temperatures, and extremely dry conditions covered large areas of the Nation, contributing to the above-average USCEI value.

These climate statistics and many others are part of NOAA’s National Climate Summary. The National Climatic Data Center produces these monthly climate reports as part of the suite of climate services that NOAA provides government, business, and community leaders so they can make informed decisions.